


stars at sea

by kaminoko_x



Series: horizons [2]
Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Criminals being criminals, F/M, Fic of Fic, Implied Torture, Pack Dynamics, implied sex, rarepair hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 15:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20932508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaminoko_x/pseuds/kaminoko_x
Summary: Or: how Jack Starbright became co-parents with a criminal overlord.Set in the world of The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by pongnosis. This is fic of fic and does not make sense without it.





	stars at sea

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10222295) by [pongnosis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pongnosis/pseuds/pongnosis). 

> I binge wrote Red Skies and this at the SAME TIME and landed myself in rarepair hell. why

After Jack has her talk with Dr. Three, she and Yassen Gregorovich sit Alex down.

“Alex, we gotta talk to you about pack bonds,” Jack says, “You’ve probably figured it out by now, but you’ve got two - me and Yassen.”

Alex nods. “I didn’t realize when I first left, but I thought about it after Kurst. There was a night I almost panicked before I went to Russia. It would have been you getting kidnapped.”

“Starbright and I are not pack bonded, and we have agreed that it is unlikely,” Yassen says, “However, you are still young enough that both of us may desire to nest you during our heats and ruts.”

“Me and pack leader over here have worked out some options if we hit our heat and rut at the same time,” Jack continues. At the curious tilt of his head, she snorts. “Honey, we’re not pack bonded, but we’re Alex’s pack, and _ he’s _ definitely not the pack leader.”

“He’s not,” Yassen concedes. He doesn’t seem at all bothered, but Alex looks delighted at her light teasing.

“Starbright’s next rut will be in a few days. It is likely she will want to nest you,” Yassen moves on, unruffled, “We will test how much she tolerates my intrusion.”

“Sure, it makes sense,” Alex says, blinking, “I guess I’ll get a nice 12 hour break. Sagitta is always trying to get me to nap more anyways.”

He pauses, raking his eyes over Jack, then Yassen. He draws in a sharp breath, frowning.

“Are you two scent marking each other?” he asks, bewildered, and then to Yassen, “Is that Jack’s sweater?”

“We’re trying to minimize the risk of us gutting each other while under the influence of approximately five million hormones,” Jack answers, “Not that I’d be able to actually hurt Yassen, but that’s also why we’re testing me first.”

Alex looks entirely disturbed by this. Yassen looks amused. Jack cackles a bit inside. Alex is even more disturbed to see her coming out of Yassen’s room after swapping beds for the night, and it’s downright hilarious the first time he hears rumours about Yassen and Jack sleeping together.

It also _ works_. They successfully spend Jack’s rut nesting Alex together, and then Yassen’s next heat the same way.

* * *

Starbright requests RTI training. She is clearly afraid, but she desires to minimize the liability she poses. Yassen and Dr. Three are pleasantly surprised, but aren’t about to turn her down. Yassen ensures Alex is back at Malagosto when it happens so that they can simulate a kidnapping scenario. This is a test for both of them: will Starbright break? Can Alex focus on an unrelated mission despite _ ::feeling:: _ Starbright under torture?

Yassen spends most of his time playing Alex’s opponent from the next room over. Alex does well. It’s not until after the exercise is over that Yassen finds out Starbright had nearly gone into total shutdown in an effort to minimize her projections at Alex, pulling her emotions in so tightly she nearly strangled herself with them. Yassen is almost impressed. Most in their world never get enough practice with pack bonds to gain that level of skill, and it’s a rare person who has the willpower to maintain that control under interrogation. Jack Starbright grew up in a large family in a friendly and tight knit community - by now, her pack bond count is likely to be above thirty, including both dissolved and active bonds. Her experience shows.

He gets the videos later. Crux questions her about Malagosto. She threatens Alex, Starbright’s parents, her friends. At some point, Crux swaps tactics and questions her about Yassen. Even through video, her voice is insidious.

_ Jack, honey, you know I don’t like having to do this. Just say the word and I can stop. You don’t even like Yassen! He’s cold and cruel and completely sociopathic. He killed Ian Rider and stole your cub. He made your child a killer and then ruined your life. He can’t possibly be worth any of this. _

On screen, Starbright sobs out a plea.

_ I hate him, I hate him, I’m sorry, I don’t know, I don’t know- _

Starbright’s a good actor with nerves of steel; she’d have to be to deal with Kurst’s men and lie straight to their faces, even with all the help from Dr. Three. Still, no one could have reasonably expected she would make it through RTI. Crux sends her notes along; she’s fairly certain Starbright had been manipulating the emotional pull of her pack bonds to brace herself. In his case, it’s likely Starbright had turned the echo of _ ::unrelated pack-of-cub:: _ to full blown _ ::pack leader::_, something much harder to voluntarily betray. Unconventional, but effective. It earns her a callsign of her own: Ankh. 

It’s not the last time Starbright treats him like her actual pack leader, nor the last time SCORPIA receives proof of her masterful hold on her pack bonds.

When Alex is seventeen, someone makes another concerted effort to kill him. With multiple major injuries and enemies cutting off their ability to contact SCORPIA via the typical channels, Sagitta and Alex go to ground. SCORPIA would never have known something was wrong except for Starbright halting her university courses and demanding to see Yassen.

Unsurprisingly, she’s taught Alex how to use and control his pack bonds. With so few options available, Alex had decided to start projecting down his bond with Starbright - 3 short pulses, 3 long ones, and then 3 short again. Morse code.

Yassen happens to be physically close enough that he has Starbright meet him in person. He challenges her. He can't feel anything. Starbright stops abruptly, tilts her head back, and bares her throat, offering her life once more for the sake of the cub that lives in the space between them. He contemplates for a split second, and then leans in to bite her jaw hard, a pack leader grudgingly accepting a pack member's submission. He licks away the blood in his teeth and gets Mace to stitch up her chin. She’ll probably scar.

Jack admits how sensitive she is. She'd felt Alex halfway across the globe when he’d undergone RTI. She would be able to _ ::feel:: _ Alex no matter how far he went. Still, Yassen's concerns were exactly why she'd come to him first. He knew Alex's enemies better and understood the risks and precautions that could be taken. If Jack was wrong, he'd be able to protect them all.

So Yassen looks into Alex's mission, and then it turns into a race against the clock to find his second. Yassen is a hunter, but Sagitta is good enough that even he would have trouble finding them before their enemies caught up with them. This time, though, Yassen has Ankh's bond sensitivity and control at his disposal, and when they drop her into the city, she navigates Team Yangtze perfectly to where Orion and Sagitta are hidden, using her bond to track her cub and talk details over Morse code.

It doesn't matter if Yassen and Jack have a pack bond or not. Jack Starbright proves that she's loyal to her bones. She'll make herself an asset to see Alex safe, and she's picked Yassen as a pack leader to back her up on the job.

* * *

Jack is thirty two when she has her first kidnap attempt. She's at work, and when the building alarm goes off, she slips her gun out from beneath her desk and tucks it into her belt before security ushers her to a safe room with the rest of the technical staff in their offices. She checks her watch is strapped firmly to her wrist and squeezes one of her shorter pendants to activate her emergency transmitter.

The singular guard in the room isn't one she knows. He locks the door and turns to them. She tenses. Jack's coworker and primary bodyguard Annie, who goes by Angel when not undercover, palms out her knives.

"Which one of you is Jack Starbright? I'll need to radio in so we can secure your position further," he asks. He doesn't know her face. This isn't protocol. He didn't call her Ankh, as he should have in a lockdown situation. Her gun is hidden under her sweater because he didn't bother to check everyone for weapons when they entered the room - not that he would have found all of them, given their collective profession. These are all mistakes Jack has been trained to notice and take advantage of. Jack tries not to think about all the people Alex is going to go through to find their security breach, and refocuses on the moment. She meets eyes with Angel, quietly puts her hand on her gun, and fixes her eyes on the guard. It’ll be faster than Angel’s knives, and this close, they need the speed.

"I'm Jack," Joonki, a programmer, bravely volunteers in her place, and when the guard's eyes slide to him, Jack whips out her gun and shoots twice, once at the chest, once in the head to ensure the kill. She's Malagosto trained. She doesn't miss.

Angel is already tucking her knives away. She raises her voice to cut over the shocked hubbub. "Everyone quiet! Security is compromised. Our attackers may know where we are. We need to move. Be quiet and follow directions, and we might just get out of this alive. We're going to the north-east exit, and then we'll pair off and scramble into town using our personal cars. Find a way to stay off the streets, but don’t return home! It is currently 5:37 pm. Activate your trackers tomorrow morning at 6:00 am so SCORPIA can find you. Ankh, have you activated your personal emergency call?"

"Yes," Jack says, grateful her voice is coming out even. She doesn't look at the body on the floor. Joonki and a few of her other coworkers look a little green.

Angel nods at her and rattles off pair assignments. Jack is with her, of course. Angel’s main priority is Jack’s safety, so it’s easier to narrow her responsibility to just Jack. If the others make it out alive, that’s a nice bonus, but that’s not where Angel’s paycheck is coming from.

"Alright people, time to put your designs to good use. Be calm, be smart, be careful," Angel says. She flips the corpse over and rifles quickly through the man's equipment, pocketing a few grenades. She checks over his gun and rises to her feet. "Let's go. Watch your step, don’t track blood into the hall."

When it's all over, two of Jack's coworkers are dead. The rest sustain a minor injuries and a lot of trauma. Well, trauma for everyone except Angel and Yael, who’s over fifty and has served in the Israeli Defence Forces. She’s seen some shit in actual active war zones. Jack herself makes it out with torn up knees, scratched hands, and a shiny new kill count of five. On the plane to Malagosto, Angel tells her she did well holding up under stress. Jack tries to sleep, nearly screams herself awake from nightmares, throws up, and then cries herself to sleep again.

In the morning, Jack remembers that Alex is in Korea, probably rebuilding the network SCORPIA lost when Yassen killed Mikato. Jack isn’t even sure SCORPIA has told him what happened yet. Instead, Crux is there to greet her.

“First kills are always hard,” Crux says, smiling at her, “It gets easier. Angel says you’re already starting to process, which is good. Give yourself some time, you’ll get there.”

Jack doesn’t want killing to get easier, but she follows Crux’s advice and sets her focus on recovering and training. She’s carefully bond shielding Alex from all of her mess until she finds her emotional balance again, but a week after the incident, she still can’t seem to find her footing. She runs into Yassen at the shooting range ten days into her stay. She finds out later he came by to check in on how Dwale and Crux are handling their recent takeovers of Dr. Three’s work in the wake of his retirement.

“Starbright. Alex is pleased you are alive. See to your continued survival,” he says, unflappable as ever. She nods in return.

_ Remember what you did this for_, she tells herself as she aims at her target, _ Alex needs you. You have to stay alive_.

Something inside her settles. She’s got a body count now, but she’s also got things to do.

* * *

Alex is twenty. It’s the first time he’s been able to see Jack after her third kidnap attempt a week ago, when MI6 had tried to grab her and nearly succeeded. If every item she’d been wearing hadn’t been gear in disguise, if Angel hadn’t been sleeping in the same room as her, if she hadn’t been trained to shoot and fight, they might have.

Alex had nearly reassigned Sagitta as her permanent security detail. Tom had been supportive, but Jack and Tom are pack these days too. Yassen had to step in to redirect Alex to finish his project, backed by Jack’s scolding, with the promise that Yassen would see to Jack’s security himself. Apparently he meant that literally. She’s been staying on the _Fer de lance_ enough that she has a toothbrush and a designated work space with all the accompanying tools there.

He’s sitting on the couch with Tom in the _Fer de lance_ while Yassen and Jack are cooking dinner together, and they’ve long since abandoned work to watch them. Jack playfully snipes at Yassen, and Yassen deadpans back, prompting a loud laugh from Jack. Alex comes to a sudden realization that they’re _ bickering_. Alex isn’t sure what to do with this information. He’s only ever seen Yassen and Jack get along well when they’re nesting him together, and even then, it’s never been like this.

In the kitchen, Yassen reaches around Jack to steal one of her spices, and he’s not trying to be stealthy at all. Jack smacks his hand lightly, telling him to just ask, she can pass things, she’s got hands, and then she leans in and nips the side of his jaw as a friendly scolding. There’s hardly any teeth. It’s almost a peck. Yassen, always composed with laser scary focus, _rolls his eyes_. It’s disgustingly fond.

“No,” Alex says, horrified. Jack and Yassen turn at the sound of his voice. “No, nope, no, I don’t want to know, any and all PDA is completely off limits around me, I forbid it.”

His very valid complaint gets eye rolls from both of them. Jack is clearly a bad influence on Yassen. Alex curses under his breath. Tom just laughs at his pain, the wanker.

* * *

Aboard the _Fer de lance_, Jack is inspecting jade pieces while Yassen works through the details of transforming SCORPIA’s human trafficking businesses into something less distasteful to Alex. It’s been almost six years since they first met at Malagosto, and two years since Jack relocated to live with him.

“Yassen,” Jack says offhand, pulling his focus out of the stack of reports he’s reviewing, “My rut’s coming up in a few days. Alex is in Chile, so I won’t be nesting him this time. I wouldn’t mind company. It’s been a while since I dated anyone.”

Jack hasn’t dated since Alex was thirteen and she was twenty seven, and they’re both aware of why she stopped.

“Do you have your eye on someone, or shall I arrange something for you?” he asks, equally as offhand.

“I do have someone in mind,” she says, lifting a piece of jade to catch the light better, “Though I’m not sure if he’ll be too busy running a whole criminal empire. What do you think?”

He puts his reports down.

“Alex is taking care of the most urgent business right now. The criminal empire is stable enough that it can survive twenty four hours without me,” Yassen says, considering, “So no, I’m not too busy, and yes, I don’t mind keeping you company.”

So he does. When his next heat rolls around, she keeps him company too.

“Alex is going to be awful when he finds out about this,” Jack says, settling under the sheets with him. The tail end of his heat means he’s got enough cognition to talk coherently, but he’s still hazy enough that he doesn’t really want to. He hums in acknowledgement instead, luxuriating in the way her bare skin feels on his.

Twenty four hours later, her predictions are proven true when they dock in Seattle and Alex comes aboard to report. He takes one whiff of them, sees the hickeys on Jack’s neck, and immediately starts whining.

“Guys, come on, what did I say about PDA?”

“We didn’t do anything in front of you,” Jack points out, “This is just leftover from what we did before we saw you.”

“Sharing a heat is a pleasant experience,” Yassen says, bland like he’s talking about the weather, “It’s certainly not worth poking holes in security to find company, but it is nonetheless enjoyable.”

“Please stop, I want no details of either of your sex lives ever, thanks,” Alex grimaces. Tom’s face is doing acrobatics in an effort to not laugh. He’s going to fail in about thirty seconds, like he always does.

“Technically, it’s a singular sex life now, since we share,” Jack says with barely concealed glee. Tom chokes on a cackle. Alex groans.

* * *

Jack and Yassen were never meant to be.

Jack is pretty sure she’s not in love, but she’s willing to take off her jewelry around him. For a woman like her, whose last line of defence is her equipment, whose life has depended on having that equipment on her, it’s complete vulnerability. Alex is one of the very few people she would never cut pack bonds with - she’d rather die in his defense, and she _trusts_ Yassen with him.

Yassen does not ever intend to be in love, but he’s willing to sleep in the same bed as her. For a man like him, whose very body is a lethal weapon, sleeping means putting down his last line of defence in complete vulnerability. Yassen never planned on having a mate, and Jack isn’t, but he's aware she’s the closest he’ll ever get.

Ten years after they meet, Yassen Gregorovich retires and hands SCORPIA over to Alex Rider. He goes home to the _Fer de lance_, to Jack Starbright. When Jack greets him with a chaste kiss, they can both feel it - a fully formed pack bond settling into their bones.

(At some point, they get married. Alex demands to officiate their wedding. They refuse and elope. Yassen kicks off his ‘honeymoon’ by listening to Jack and Alex argue on the phone.

“Alex, why would you even want to officiate, this isn’t some lovey-dovey marriage- ”

“No, we’re getting married because it’s easier to commit tax fraud. What do you mean, we’re a criminal gadget maker and a former criminal overlord, it wouldn’t be proper if we didn’t spend the rest of our lives commiting tax fraud- ”

“No, we’re not an old married couple, what the hell, did you just call me old- ”

Yassen laughs and goes to kiss his wife.)


End file.
